Men Without Chests [somewhat NSFW language]

I read The Abolition of Man by C.S. Lewis and most of it went right over my head. However he does talk about there being a third element in a man besides his brain and his carnal urges. This third thing, the chest, consists of objective truths, Aristotelian virtues like duty, kindness, and temperance. The thesis is modern society is stripping these things away and once these objective grounding truths are gone there is nothing standing in the way of propaganda swaying a person whichever way the masters’ please. One can look at the approval of aid in dying that has jumped up precipitously (to 70%) in the last ten years.

Then there was this thing called the Tao which isn’t very specifically defined but has the feel of all the moral laws of traditional cultures east and west. Basically what was instilled in people to keep them behaving. But he would say there is something innate in man that interacts with these codes, like humankind were supposed to live like this. Sexual taboos come to mind, like how even in ancient Egypt there were sex acts that were verboten that one had to answer for in their afterlife. And of course the most important of these codes was the golden rule. Societies that were taoless, like Nazi Germany, and Soviet Russia, didn’t have these things and propaganda took right over.

I look at morality like the tradition where the king stands up everybody else has to. Morality is caught, not taught and cascades down to the powerless from the powerful. What has taught me I was living in a taoless society is how the people and institutions in power (in my case mostly Christian ones) over me have treated me throughout the years. As Eminem said in the song “Who Knew”, “You want me to fix up lyrics while the President gets his dick sucked?”.